Rock and Hard Places book cover design

Foruli Classics asked us to produce a book cover design for Rock and Hard Places by Andrew Mueller. The book is a collection of Mueller’s best journalism from the backstages of some of rock music’s major players: The Cure, U2, Radiohead, Green Day and more. These are mixed with tales from war torn areas such as Afghanistan, Bosnia and Sarajevo.

We created an illustration of a Fender Telecaster melded with the barrel of an automatic rifle. It was inspired by the mix of stories along with Mueller’s observation from his travels that ‘Young men carry electric guitars and rifles with the same insouciant swagger…’

The author and the publisher loved our design and the only change was to flip around the image of the Telecaster. Apparently we had it backwards, which shows how much we know about rock.